Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

He really is that stupid.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

The words do not have to be perfect.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

This really is a full service blog.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Saturday Morning Open Thread: President Biden Has An Omnibus Spending Bill to Sign

Saturday Morning Open Thread: President Biden Has An Omnibus Spending Bill to Sign

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Per the Associated Press, “Senate passes $1.2 trillion funding package in early morning vote, ending threat of partial shutdown”:

The Senate passed a $1.2 trillion package of spending bills in the early morning hours Saturday, a long overdue action nearly six months into the budget year that will push any threats of a government shutdown to the fall. The bill now goes to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

The vote was 74-24. It came after funding had expired for the agencies at midnight, but the White House sent out a notice shortly after the deadline announcing the Office of Management and Budget had ceased shutdown preparations because there was a high degree of confidence that Congress would pass the legislation and the president would sign it on Saturday.

“Because obligations of federal funds are incurred and tracked on a daily basis, agencies will not shut down and may continue their normal operations,” the White House statement said.

Prospects for a short-term government shutdown had appeared to grow Friday evening after Republicans and Democrats battled over proposed amendments to the bill. Any successful amendments to the bill would have sent the legislation back to the House, which had already left town for a two-week recess.

But shortly before midnight Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a breakthrough.

“It’s been a very long and difficult day, but we have just reached an agreement to complete the job of funding the government,” Schumer said. “It is good for the country that we have reached this bipartisan deal. It wasn’t easy, but tonight our persistence has been worth it.”…

Rep. Jeffries had a pretty good day:



Pastor Johnson’s flock, not so much:


Leopards, faces, things of that nature…

Reader Interactions

140Comments

  3. 3.

    Another Scott

    Yup, this is Gingrich’s House. Recycling noisy demonizing failure still gets you failure.

    [ womp, womp ]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  4. 4.

    MattF

    I get the feeling that Johnson keeps sending them back to their districts because he’s tired of their complaining all the time.

  7. 7.

    Princess

    “People over Politics” is such bullshit but it’s the kind of thing normies eat up with a spoon, so good for Jeffries. It can be Biden’s campaign slogan.

  8. 8.

    EarthWindFire

    Newt needs one of those sleep hygiene routines. His can start with a nice hot cup of STFU.

  10. 10.

    New Deal democrat

    Just what is Digital World Acquisition Company, the SPAC that is trying to line Trump’s pockets with enough cash just in time to avoid New York seizing his properties?

    According to Wikipedia,

    On October 20, 2021, DWAC and Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) announced that they had entered into a definitive merger agreement that would combine the two entities, allowing TMTG to become a publicly traded company. DWAC was created with the help of ARC Capital, a Shanghai-based firm specializing in listing Chinese companies on American stock exchanges that has been a target of SEC investigations for misrepresenting shell corporations. Some investors were surprised to learn that their investment money was being used to finance a Trump company. In 2021, the DWAC Trump venture was linked with another company, China Yunhong Holdings, based in Wuhan, Hubei, until its lead banker who was running the merger promised to sever ties with China in December 2021, stating that Yunhong was to “dissolve and liquidate”. In February 2022, Reuters reported that the connection between Shanghai-based ARC Capital and Digital World was more extensive than thought, with ARC having offered money to get the SPAC off the ground

     
    …. In October 2021 it was reported that House representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) [last seen taking Mike Johnson hostage to attempt to prevent the House funding Ukraine] had purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 DWAC shares after the Trump merger was announced.
     
    Per Invictus at The Big Picture, “the address of Digital World Acquisition Corp [is] 3109 Grand Ave, Miami, FL. It’s a UPS store. I’m sure it’s fine. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.”
     
    What are the odds that during a second term, in addition to Ukraine, Trump wouldn’t lift a finger to help Taiwan?

  11. 11.

    RevRick

    @Princess: I agree that it’s a bullshit slogan. Aristotle, after all, located Politics under the category of Ethics. It is supposed to be how we work together for the common good, which, of course, means arguing about what constitutes the common good, and also how best to attain it.
    The problem with most of the GOP caucus is that they have adopted the nihilistic notion that there is no common good, and the function of government has become one of repression.

  12. 12.

    Betty Cracker

    I’ve been binge-watching “Only Murders in the Building” to avoid the horrible domestic and international news and distract myself from personal woes. Highly recommended and streaming on Hulu! I started it thinking there was only one season and was overjoyed to find there are two more.

  17. 17.

    Chris

    @p.a.:

    By the time I started paying attention to politics, Gingrich’s speakership was less than a decade in the past, but the phrase “a stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like” had already entered the political lexicon.  Problem was, it accurately described so damn many people, not even all of them Republican, that I kept forgetting who it was originally applied to.

    (In the year of our Lord 2024, there’s a good argument that it doesn’t even describe Republicans anymore – they’re no one’s idea of what a smart person sounds like, not even their own, and they make it a point of honor because to sound smart is to be an intellectual, or so they sneer – so much as the kind of above-it-all “non-partisans” in places like the media punditariat).

  18. 18.

    RevRick

    @Chris: I agree to some extent, but in the long run this becomes the equivalent of building an outhouse next to your drinking water supply.

  19. 19.

    TBone

    Too much money sloshing around with nowhere to earn interest (before rates raised) or stimulate anything besides buybacks leads to investing in schemes specifically designed for corruption, as in SPACs where there isn’t even a “there” there, just a trial balloon filled with hot air.  Now with fortune cookie!

  20. 20.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @New Deal democrat: At the start of this month,  I got stuck dealing with a bunch of rabid MAGAs. One of their big bugaboos was China – all kinds of nut job ideas.* I realize that RWNJs have conspiracy theories galore about China, going all the way back to…all the way back. But the MAGA conspiracy theories are like all the rest. Somehow they all smack of things that Republicans, and Trump, are in some way actually participating in.

    *The Chinese government is up to plenty of authoritarian trouble without having to make up scenarios.

  22. 22.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Reposting from the dead pre-dawn thread.

    Good morning, BJ. Very very wet here today (2.4” expected) so not going anywhere. The dog hates rain so even dog walks will be the bare minimum.

    It occurs to be that I never know when a day like today is part of a larger storm system any more. I don’t see TV weather reports. I don’t see somebody pointing at a map of the US and talking about highs and lows and fronts.

    All my weather forecasts come from apps or weather.gov so all I see is a very localized forecast. And often I’m just looking for the next few hours.

  25. 25.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @TBone: I saw where Ken Buck hinted there were a few more resignations coming. They asked him something about whether anybody was mad at him for cutting the Repub advantage, and he said something to the effect of “I think they’re going to be a lot madder at the next three guys”.

  27. 27.

    TBone

    @Chris T.: 👍 I have a ‘Nova sweatshirt from my home turf college days at Rosemont.  Thanks for the reminder ☺️. SPACs’ speed is supposed to be a good thing, and lead to their renewal and permanence if they play by rules?  Not sure what to say…

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Hahahaha *rubs hands together in anticipation

  35. 35.

    hueyplong

    @Frankensteinbeck: The extended dithering is nothing more than a failure at first to grasp the logistics of a proper folding under the circumstances.  He’s the type of speaker you’d expect to be in place during the stage of the Republican Revolution in which MTG is playing the role of Robespierre in power.

  36. 36.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    I strongly suspect that death threats are behind a lot of the current unhappiness of some reps with their party. We heard some (senators?) say they voted against impeach or removal because of credible threats to them or their families.

    But now the MAGA mouth-breathers who think that making threats is ordinary politics, are turning on the “moderates” (somebody who votes 95% in line but once said something mean about Orange Jesus or Jan 6)

  37. 37.

    Chris

    @RevRick:

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    People don’t like the idea that they’re just pawns in the games politicians play with each other.  The sentiment is timeless, universal, and, frankly, completely understandable.  Good politicians need to reassure the public by saying things that amount to “don’t worry, I consider your well-being valuable in and of itself, not just a way to score points in my pissing contest with the representative from three rows down.  I think it’s disgusting that there are politicians who do that.”  The people who say this are often bullshitters, but the people who aren’t need to say it too.

    In this case, it helps that it’s, well, true: Republicans are tying up funding the government because they refuse to give Joe Biden a win, which is exactly the kind of thing the average person thinks of as “politics as usual,” and Democrats are trying to keep the government funded just like they do even when there’s a Republican in office, because they think the well being of the many many people whose livelihood depends on a functional government is more important than that.

    Sure, our politicians could try to explain “but you know, keeping the government up and running is also politics, anything the government does is politics,” but considering that most people’s eyes start glazing over before you even reach the number of characters allowed in a tweet, I’m okay with them doing this instead.

  39. 39.

    Baud

    @Chris:

    The GOP base is obsessed with the idea that Dems only care about “those people” and don’t care about “real Americans.” It fuels their hatred of us.

  41. 41.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @hueyplong:

    I think you’re right.  Johnson isn’t more stubborn than Boehner, Ryan, or McCarthy, he’s just less competent.  He comes up with cockamamie plans that don’t get him what he’s aiming for, but do have the side effect of stretching out dysfunction.

    In the end, he folds at the last minute like his brethren.

  42. 42.

    MomSense

    This whole situation is beyond absurd.  It’s a god damned tragedy wrapped in a farce. All of this drama and violence over a powerful country engaging in the basics of a modern society.  We should have been making decisions strategically, proactively for decades concerning the environment, climate change mitigation, health, education, economy, resources and how to structure an economy based on consumption as resources decline.  Instead we have been forced to deal with fucking stupidity and greed cloaked in religion.  I’m sick of yelling at my radio and tv. And the political persuasion I do with my phone banking is so god damned frustrating.  Trying to break through the layers of ignorance, misinformation, and bullshit is almost impossible over the phone.

    I just don’t know what to say anymore.  The desire to live out my days as a hermit is getting stronger by the minute.

  44. 44.

    p.a.

    Glad I took the pension buyout*: Verizon just offloaded pensions to Prudential & RGA Reinsurance.  No more COLA, no more ERISA/PBGC pension protection.  Pensioners now “protected” by the individual states’ insurance regulators 😱.  Assholes.

    *Paying attention to the market is no fun, but I saw this transfer coming.  Prudential is hardly a shaky entity, but I wasn’t comfortable with it.

  46. 46.

    Kristine

    “Politics” is like “chemicals.” An all-encompassing label that’s lately been reserved for the bad and nasty to the point that some think “free of politics/chemicals” is not only possible but preferable.

  48. 48.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chris: “Politics” is also often used to mean “empty partisanship”. And everyone tries to frame their own political positions as just good common sense.

  49. 49.

    Kristine

    @p.a.: my old company offered pensions until this past year—it enabled me to retire early. Now new hires just have the 401k (and annual profit sharing). Which is my rambling way of wondering if they would ever consider something like that to clear it off their plate.

  50. 50.

    hueyplong

    @Baud: “The GOP base is obsessed with the idea that Dems only care about ‘those people’ and don’t care about ‘real Americans.’ It fuels their hatred of us.”

    It’s Black Republicans like Lincoln from whom we must reclaim our country.  MAGA!

  51. 51.

    Another Scott

    @p.a.: Verizon is having a tough time.  They only made $79.09B in gross profits in 2023.  They’re really hurting.

    So you can understand why they had to unload that crushing pension burden.

    They’re suffering so much!!

    //s

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  54. 54.

    hueyplong

    @Frankensteinbeck: Yes, that’s the theory.  We’re at the stage when no reasonably intelligent person (or person capable of even the slightest hint of shame) is willing to take the job.

    We’re two Republicans shy of Speaker Jeffries.  None will make the motion.  But on some occasion in which MTG does, as part of her brinksmanship, we’ll see if two of them (retiring the next day) make her regret it.

    I doubt it will happen, but if you’re into rosy daydreaming….

  55. 55.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    Ha!  You laugh but I’ve thought of a B-J commune in northern Maine.  Plenty of space so we could all be in our separate dwellings communicating online.

  57. 57.

    cmorenc

    @Another Scott: It’s the MBAs at Verizon who are suffering lack of promotions and bonuses if they can’t craft further ways to wring more profits out of worker pensions and benefits.

  58. 58.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: ​
     

    Good morning, BJ. Very very wet here today (2.4” expected) so not going anywhere. The dog hates rain so even dog walks will be the bare minimum.

    Here in Calvert County, the rain gauge on the back deck already has two inches of water in it, with another 3 to 4/10 of an inch expected before it eases off after noon. I may venture out after that if there’s a reason, but it’s a strictly indoor morning.

    To most people, “politics” and “political theater” are one and the same. They don’t think of legislators getting things accomplished as politics, they think of legislators getting nowhere for bullshit reasons as politics, and legislators doing all sorts of performative crap instead of getting things done as politics. So I’m with Jeffries on this one.

  59. 59.

    p.a.

    @Kristine: We had both.  The, IIRC 2003 contract, new hires lost the defined pension benefit: 401k only.

     

    @Another Scott: Yup.  They did it for management, union, and non-union employees.  And to be accurate, this is Verizon “wireline” I’m talking about.  Vz Wireless is a “different” entity until you go high enough up the budget “food chain.”

    Some wireless employees are unionized, not sure if any of them had/have a pension.  Very doubtful.

  62. 62.

    JML

    @John S.: handing out golden parachutes to useless executives gets a lot harder when you take care of your employees properly and make sure the rank and file that actually do the work are paid good wages and real benefits.

  63. 63.

    RevRick

    @Chief Oshkosh: @Chris: My problem with this is that it suggests that all politics is dirty, and those who run for office are, by definition, dirty. And that creates a vast body of cynicism in the general public.
    It further implies that there’s some pure, Platonic state that rises above politics, and that’s how you end up with conspiracy theories and demonizing others.

    I am much more of an Aristotlean and Wittgensteinian, which means both that while life is messy and hard, it matters, and that means language matters. Scratch all white Evangelicals, and you’ll find Platonists eager to go to the right place after death.
    For me, the formulation “people before politics “ is lazy and ultimately dangerous.

  64. 64.

    Geminid

    At this point, a Speaker Jeffries would be a good outcome for Republicans, I believe. He’d become a minority Speaker at a time when his caucus is seriously conflicted over miltary aid to Israel, and even if Jeffries could overcome those divisions there is little positive legislation that would pass the Senate anyway, especially in an election year.

    Ukraine aid can advance by Petition to Discharge as surely as with Jeffries as Speaker, and perhaps more easily. And after 14 months making fools of themselves and a travesty of Congress , Republicans would leave Democrats holding the bag as they escaped into opposition. So I hope Jeffries can stay out of the Speaker’s Chair until next January.

  65. 65.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​

    We’ll see. We only need a majority for a day. We just need to get Ukraine funded.

    We’re at least five GOP resignations away from the blessed event of a Dem majority. That ‘one vote margin’ expression makes their thin 217-213 majority (once Gallagher’s resignation is effective on April 19) thinner than it is: it’s technically true because if the Dems are unified and TWO Rethugs vote with the Dems, they’d have a 215-215 tie on a bill that the Rethugs were trying to pass.

    If the GOPers were actually trying to pass legislation, that would matter. But in order to get Speaker Jeffries this year, we’d need five more GOP resignations before any of them were replaced in a special election. So realistically zero chance of that.

  66. 66.

    Eunicecycle

    @Kristine: my husband’s company did that 20 years ago-went to the 401k for new hires, and stopped pension calculations for current employees. So he had a mixture. He elected to take the lump sum instead of the pension; it was a pretty generous amount plus then we didn’t have to decide whether we thought I was going to die first so he could take the full pension without a spousal benefit

    ETA it also saved us from the possibility they could do what happened at p.a.’s company

  67. 67.

    MomSense

    @RevRick:

    I think we lost the battle over the cannotations of the word politics.  It’s now a dirty word.  Decades of Republican drama and sabotage ruined it.  I still hate the way “impact” is now used for things other than collision but I lost that battle, too.  I’m pretty sure the failure to know whether to use effect or affect is to blame.

  68. 68.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, in the continuing adventures of everything* online is fake and a fraud, we present Wired.com – Streaming bots and Spotify:

    A man in Denmark was sentenced to 18 months in prison today for using fake accounts to trick music streaming services into paying him 2 million Danish kroner ($290,000) in royalties. The unusual case reveals a weak spot in the business model behind the world’s biggest music platforms.

    The 53-year-old consultant, who had pleaded not guilty, was convicted of data fraud and copyright infringement after using bots to listen to his own music through fake profiles on both Spotify and Apple Music, collecting royalties in the process. The data fraud took place between 2013 and 2019.

    Fake or “artificial” streams are a big problem for the streaming industry. Between 1 billion and 3 billion fake streams took place on popular music platforms in 2021, according to a study by France’s National Music Center. Fake streams are a problem, according to the music industry, because they divert royalty payments away from real artists and pollute streaming platforms’ data.

    “This is an example of a problem that’s becoming a liability within the music industry,” says Rasmus Rex Pedersen, an associate professor in communication at Roskilde University in Denmark, who researches music streaming. “The streaming services have had several years to develop tools to combat this type of fraud and apparently they haven’t been doing a very good job.” There are still services advertising sales of fake streams, he adds.

    In February, a court in the Danish city of Aarhus heard how the man, whose name was withheld, was accused of using bots to generate a suspiciously high number of plays on 689 tracks, which he had registered as his own music. In one week, 244 music tracks were listened to 5.5 million times, with 20 accounts responsible for the majority of the streams. The defendant had previously argued these playbacks were linked to his job in the music industry. He plans to appeal, his lawyer Henrik Garlik Jensen told WIRED.

    The man created software that played the music automatically, claims Maria Fredenslund, CEO of the Danish Rights Alliance, which protects copyright on the internet and first reported the case to the police. “So he didn’t really listen to the music. No one really listened to the music.” According to the Danish Rights Alliance, the defendant had 69 accounts with music streaming services, including 20 with Spotify alone. Due to his network of accounts, he was at one point the 46th highest-earning musician in Denmark.

    […]

    nixCraft on Mastodon.social has a video of 20 disassembled phones in a single server rack chassis.

    Imagine all the progress that could be made if so many people weren’t spending so much time, energy, and electricity, coming up with ways to cheat and scam people and systems…

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    —
    * – Balloon-Juice.com potentially being an exception!

  69. 69.

    Chris T.

    @p.a.: I’ve never had a job that had a pension benefit, just the SEP-IRA and 401(k) ones. Fortunately I’m independently-semi-wealthy (cough, not really but enough to have been introduced to financial stuff by my 20s). The SEP-IRA was with Vanguard and was pretty good, the 401(k) was with Fidelity and was OK. When I eventually left the BigCorp with the 401(k) I rolled that one  over to Vanguard as well, and it’s done pretty darn well—enough that I was able to retire early when COVID hit. We’re on the Spousal Unit’s Social Security plus my withdrawals, and I currently plan to wait until full retirement age before I add my SS to the mix (which will help drop the burn rate on the retirement accounts, as it’s currently just a bit higher than I feel comfortable with*).

    *We took a big hit in 2023 for home repairs which made it a lot higher than the “comfortable with” rate, as we spent money on necessary maintenance, discovered some severe rot in one wall during the summer, and then the garage doors failed—literally ripped apart—near the end of the year. Fingers crossed that there won’t be any Large Unbudgeted Expenses this year, though I know we’re due for a new roof within a few years…

  72. 72.

    Ken

    @cmorenc: It’s the MBAs at Verizon who are suffering lack of promotions and bonuses if they can’t craft further ways to wring more profits out of worker pensions and benefits.

    You remind me, I wanted to thank everyone who recommended the Murderbot books by Martha Wells.

    And if you’re wondering why this reminded me, read the books.

  73. 73.

    Fair Economist

    @Baud: Judging by the last two resignations, the resigners are aiming for long periods of vacant seats. The WI guy’s seat is now vacant until the next Congress, and Buck’s is vacant for months (although it may have been more aimed at disadvantaging Boebert.)

  74. 74.

    hueyplong

    @lowtechcyclist: I wouldn’t have predicted the resignations of Gallagher and Buck two months ago, so I’d hesitate to call it a “zero” chance.  Still long odds, but not zero.  And I’d also be hesitant to discount the possibility of a GOPer or two being in office but failing to vote for one reason or another.  Or passively-aggressively threatening same in order to get Ukraine funded.

    It’s ok and maybe even therapeutic to be optimistic once in a while.

  75. 75.

    CaseyL

    I understand the media-friendly shorthand, using “politics” as a grab-bag for “everything you dislike about government.”

    But I disagree with it.  Strenuously.

    Any grouping of humans involves conflict (even within families).  So any social grouping of humans has to have a mechanism for de-escalating and/or working through conflict.  That’s “politics,” writ large or small.  When you have a social grouping as big and as fractured as the US, “politics” is going to get very complicated, in terms of deals and compromises and working productively with people you can’t stand.

    I don’t like, have never liked, demonizing “politics.”  How else are we supposed to get anything done, except by developing working relationships with people who we otherwise disagree with?  The “Golden Age” of Legislation – which was, what? The 1960s? 1970s? – you would not believe what a motley cast and crew there was in the House and Senate at the time.  The one thing that greased the rails was pork: lots and lots of back and forth bargaining over whose district got federal funding for X, Y, and Z.

    When the GOP ended earmarks, it killed the one thing that everyone could work with everyone else on.  If ol’ Newtie was any kind of genius, it was in finding the one thing that kept the whole enterprise working and smashing it to bits.  Which was deliberate, since he (or his backers) did want to destroy the US’ ability to self-govern.  Mission Accomplished!

    O/T:  An interesting article about Judge Cannon and the case of the quitting clerks, somewhat reassuring in that it posits she’s “merely” in way over her head, not actively evil.

  76. 76.

    stinger

    @Baud: ​
     

    @MomSense: We should form a community for hermits!

    I’m in! Err… I’m out? I’m on the margin?

  77. 77.

    Ironcity

    @cmorenc: And wring more income from the crappy Fios service, doing away with landline service, and any other “financial engineering” they can.   Seems when companies that used to be primarily product oriented (Bell System, GE, Boeing, etc) get taken over/for a ride by the profit maximizers product gets enshitafied; all possible costs/risks get turned into externalities and all possible revenue streams are diverted  for  greater profit for the owners.    Pension obligations are a cost so they get turned into externalities or abandoned.

    Systemicly, with the advent of IRAs and 401ks  people’s retirement savings gets turned into a large sloshing bowl of cash that can be separated from individual retirees/prospective retirees by sufficiently slick investment managers/huxters/con-men.

  78. 78.

    Ken

    @Another Scott: I was puzzled by this; why would the streaming service not be charging the fake accounts played the music? Meaning that the fraudster would get back a (small) percentage of what his fake accounts paid.

    But I assume it’s one of those situations where the service’s real customers are the advertisers, and they don’t charge the listeners (or only a modest fee). So the fraud is that his bots didn’t watch the ads. If that’s the setup, I’d almost think the streaming service would keep quiet about it — if anything, they’re getting more ad revenue from the bot accesses.

  79. 79.

    lowtechcyclist

    @RevRick: ​
     

    For me, the formulation “people before politics “ is lazy and ultimately dangerous.

    My first thought is that losing the Presidency would be dangerous ten months from now. If need be, ‘ultimately’ can wait.

    But my other thought is that the way people see the term ‘politics’ is baked in pretty deeply. I grokked that when I was first paying attention to politics sixty years ago. We’re not going to turn that around overnight. And really the only way to change people’s mental associations with the word ‘politics’ is by getting things done through the political process. Right now that means holding the Presidency and the Senate, and winning the House. And ultimately getting rid of the filibuster, but in the short term getting Senators like Mark Warner and Angus King to agree to enough bill-specific carve-outs to pass bills (like voting rights) that make a difference and at least somewhat restore voters’ faith in the system.

    The language can change, but it won’t change without changing the reality it represents.

  80. 80.

    Fair Economist

    @CaseyL: Yes.  Politics is how we defeated the Nazis. Politics is how we got Social Security and Medicare. Politics is how we reduce crime. Politics is how the air is breathable and the water doesn’t burn.

    Politics is how we get important things done.

  82. 82.

    MomSense

    @Fair Economist:

    The American experiment grew out of the enlightenment and the idea of the common good.  One of Reagan’s terrible legacies is the way his revolution dismantled the idea of the common good.  We rarely aspire to do big, great things as a society anymore.  The closest I’ve felt that spirit was when our state organized amazing vaccine clinics sponsored by the big hospitals.  We filled our convention centers/arenas with volunteers who welcomed, registered, administered and assisted with vaccines.  Everyone was so cheerful and wonderful.  It made me tear up because that spirit is so seldomly experienced now.

  83. 83.

    RaflW

    AP: “long overdue action … that will push any threats of a government shutdown to the fall”

    This isn’t unreasonable reporting, except there’s one word missing. “push any Republican threats to the fall”. Democrats don’t play these hostage-taking games. We understand that shutting down National Parks, furloughing workers in dozens of agencies and across many services for Americans is bullshit.

    Politically, the GOP would be insane to threaten a shutdown close to the election. But then, that might be what they do, since they are clearly not led by normal, rational people.

  84. 84.

    JWR

    @hueyplong:

    We’re at the stage when no reasonably intelligent person (or person capable of even the slightest hint of shame) is willing to take the job.

    I thought that after giving KevMac the shiv they had learned their lesson and weren’t likely to try that again. Oh well… ;)

  85. 85.

    RaflW

    @New Deal democrat: I can’t find it now, but I feel pretty sure I read something fairly recently from a former (and now distancing) Trump cabinet official basically saying this. That Trump wouldn’t give a shit about China attempting to take Taiwan.

    It’s clear as day that he thinks all the global ‘strongmen’ should be BFFs. That was his whole love-notes-with-Kim thing, too. And of course Putin seems to have him by the nads, though Trump is stupid enough to think its a secret partnership.

  86. 86.

    Layer8Problem

    @RaflW:  And of course Putin seems to have him by the nads, though Trump is stupid enough to think its a secret partnership.

    “And what I’m holding you by, Donald? Consider that a Vlad’s Bestest Pals Club secret handshake.”

  87. 87.

    John S.

    @JML:

    Unfortunately, handing out golden parachutes to useless executives is deemed far more important than taking care of employees at most large corporations.

    My own decade of experience working for a Fortune 500 company only further bolstered this notion for me.

  88. 88.

    RaflW

    @Layer8Problem: So much of Trump’s genuflecting and open, obvious knuckling to dominance games has, I feel, been forgotten (just like many voters seem to have forgotten how gobsmackingly stupid Trump’s daily Covid ‘briefings’ were).

    A refresher from just one such performance:

    ‘Disgraceful,’ ‘Pushover,’ ‘Deeply Troubled’: Reaction To The Trump-Putin Summit
    NPR, Jul 16, 2018

    Many Republicans harshly criticized President Trump’s performance Monday at a news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which Trump said Putin’s denial that Moscow interfered with the 2016 election is “strong and powerful” — despite U.S. intelligence findings to the contrary.

    House Speaker Paul Ryan responded with a statement echoed by many senior Republican officials: “There is no question that Russia interfered in our election and continues attempts to undermine democracy here and around the world.” …

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., spoke to reporters as he entered the Capitol on Monday. “As I’ve said repeatedly, the Russians are not our friends and I entirely agree with the assessment of our intelligence community.”

    Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., was even more blunt, telling reporters on Capitol Hill that Trump’s performance “made us look, as a nation, like a pushover. … I did not think this was a good moment for our country.”

    Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain … called it “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate.”

  89. 89.

    Another Scott

    Interesting long Reuters reporting on foiled Al Qaeda assassination attempt on Clinton in Manila in 1996:

    It was late evening when Clinton flew into Manila.

    As Air Force One descended, Secret Service agent Daniel Lewis relayed the intelligence to the Secret Service team at the airport about a “device on a bridge” on the main route to The Manila Hotel.

    Buckled into his seat outside the Clintons’ cabin, Lewis Merletti, who led Clinton’s protective detail and later became Secret Service director, said he came to the same conclusion after a call from a U.S. intelligence officer whose name he didn’t know disclose warning of a communications intercept mentioning a “wedding across a bridge.”

    He said he recalled an intelligence report several years earlier that identified “wedding” as “terrorist code for an assassination.” The planned motorcade route showed three bridges on the main route to the Clintons’ hotel.

    “That’s it. We’re changing the route,” he remembered saying over a secure radio link to Glod, who confirmed Merletti’s recollection of the event.

    The bomb intended for Clinton was found atop an electrical box on a bridge along the original route, said Merletti, Lewis and Glod, who retired from the Secret Service in 1998, 2003 and 2011, respectively. Glod was rehired in 2017 as a law enforcement instructor before leaving in October 2023.

    Reuters video footage of Clinton’s arrival shows bomb disposal experts wiring an explosive to the side of an electrical box on a bridge and detonating it. No bomb is seen atop the box.

    [ image – A controlled explosion is detonated on a roadside traffic control box examined by the bomb disposal team, along the route President Clinton had been scheduled to take to the hotel where he was staying for the APEC Summit in Manila, Philippines, November 23, 1996. via REUTERS TV ]

    Filipino security personnel also recovered a red Mitsubishi Pajero abandoned at the far end of the bridge, the agents said. They said the AK-47 assault rifles found inside suggested that the attackers planned to block the span with the vehicle and fire on the motorcade.

    The next morning, Glod and Merletti said they were briefed on the plot by a U.S. intelligence official at the U.S. embassy and shown photos of the device.

    It comprised armor-piercing rifle-propelled grenades atop a box containing TNT wired to a Nokia phone rigged as a detonator, they said. Lewis and Craig Ulmer, who was the agent in charge of the Manila ground team, said they also later saw the photos.

    Much more at the link.

    It’s good to remember that history hinges on small things. We have to make progress whenever we can, because the opportunity may be lost and not return for a long time…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  91. 91.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Princess:

    “People over Politics” is such bullshit

    I’m not sure why it’s bullshit, but if, as you say, normies eat it up, let’s cook a big batch.

  92. 92.

    Kristine

    @Eunicecycle: I thought long and hard about retiring because I left early and knew I would take a hit in growth when I started drawing from the IRA. The pension payout over my estimated lifetime doubled my retirement savings and enabled me to take the leap.

    Over the decades, my old company has steadily whittled away benefits for everyone but the upper management tiers/C-suite. Insurance got worse and cost more. Little perks like being able to buy US Savings Bonds via payroll deduction got yanked (this happened when Clinton was POTUS and I swear they did it because they’re Big Pharma and were pissed about the Health Security Act). One of their brags had been the fact they were one of the few companies that still offered a pension. Now that’s gone.

  93. 93.

    Matt McIrvin

    @RaflW: Remember how his reaction to the Tiananmen Square crackdown was to gush about the “strength” the PRC government was displaying? Trump worships “strength” which, to him, is the same thing as totalitarian displays of force and macho posturing.

  94. 94.

    Jackie

    @RaflW: Are you referring to a segment on either CNN or MSNBC when someone described TIFG holding up a sharpie, pointing to the tip, saying that represents Taiwan, then pointing to the Resolute Desk, saying that represents China, then saying Taiwan is nothing – or words to that effect?

  96. 96.

    Kristine

    @Another Scott: A close relative of the page-stuffing and other scams on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited platform. Dangle a bucket o’ money out there, and a host of folks will figure out how to steal it while shitting the bed for everyone else.

  97. 97.

    Soprano2

    @Chief Oshkosh: In Missouri “they’re going to buy all our farmland unless we pass a law to stop them” seems to be the current conspiracy theory. The ironic thing is that they passed a law several years ago specifically so some Chinese company could legally buy part of a huge pork producer that’s big here – Smithfield, I think.

  101. 101.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @lowtechcyclist:

    To most people, “politics” and “political theater” are one and the same.

    That’s been my experience with people who do not follow politics. To them, politics is whatever is on the news and, as we know, that means whatever Republicans are yelling about this week.

    So they don’t realize that politics means Republicans oppose the Child Tax Credit that reduced child poverty. They think politics is Budweiser giving someone a can with their picture on it.

  103. 103.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @stinger: Long ago I read an Isaac Asimov story that took place on a planet where everybody stayed home and only visited virtually. That story might have been written in the 1950s or even 1940s.

    It’s interesting how far along that road Covid took us. I’m almost entirely in that world now.

    So yeah, a hermit community sounds like a good and natural thing to me. :-)

  104. 104.

    NotMax

    The Senate passed a $1.2 trillion package of spending bills in the early morning hours Saturday, a long overdue action

    Predicating the onus on the Senate is disingenuous in the extreme.

  105. 105.

    BlueGuitarist

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    There is a reason that many universities have government rather than political science majors.

    Interesting!
    i guessed that the departments that called it Government rather than Political Science or Politics were simply the ones that had it as a separate major earliest, and chose the name to indicate focus on formal government institutions rather than political controversies.
    Hoping you and/or others can shed more light on this!

  106. 106.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @hueyplong: I’m into rosy daydreaming. One of my biggest faults in trying to cope with 21st century American politics.

    @JWR: Notice how MTG always seems to be one of the hands holding the shiv. Her name will never appear in a sentence with the phrase “learned her lesson” or even “learned”.

  107. 107.

    NotMax

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym

    On the downside, the potluck dinners are pathetic.
    ;)

    Full disclosure: On the “what employ are you best suited for” test given in high school, the top result in my case was (really, truly) hermit.

  108. 108.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kristine:

    A close relative of the page-stuffing and other scams on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited platform.

    My kindle is constantly showing me advertisements for different ‘books’ in a set of tiny (25 pages!) AI-generated books that are somebody scamming Amazon’s system to force the advertising system to do exactly this.  They pull and rerelease the same book, or make changes, submit them under different author names… Amazon is SO vulnerable to scammers.

  112. 112.

    RaflW

    @Jackie: I think so. But don’t remember who it was who said it. In context, it sounded like Trump thought Taiwan was tiny and unimportant. Which would fit is moron-level skill at ‘analysis.’

  113. 113.

    BlueGuitarist

    @NotMax:

    Thanks for reminding me of that song, but hearing it now is a painful reminder that the right wing keeps
    lapping satire.
    But it was written before, as per Tom Lehrer, the day that satire died.

  115. 115.

    Kristine

    @Frankensteinbeck: I know legit writers who swear by KU and maintain they make much more money there than they would if they released wide. But it’s so scam-laden. Plus, there’s the all-the-eggs-in-one-basket aspect.

    But I also know of legit writers who write fast, know how to play the algos, and make millions, so what do I know?

    And yeah, AI-generated junk books are the newest scam.

  116. 116.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @BlueGuitarist: I saw Randy Newman perform Political Science during the GWB administration.  He introduced it by saying, “I wrote this song a long time ago.  It’s finally become policy.”

  117. 117.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: “The Naked Sun”, which was 1956-57. And I think the society was organized that way out of fear of infectious disease. The people on the planet made heavy use of robots to avoid face-to-face interaction.

    But Asimov may well have been inspired by E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” which imagined a similar setup in 1909 (and then, as the title implies, imagined what happens when the system breaks down).

  118. 118.

    dirge

    @Kristine: A close relative of the page-stuffing and other scams…

    Yeah, nothing new.  Around 15 years ago, the video content management system I was running was getting slammed with bot traffic at the end of every month.  We finally traced it back to a client (a well established magazine), who explained that they had to meet monthly page view quotas for their advertisers, so had hired someone to produce traffic.  They absolutely could not get their heads around what was wrong with that.

  119. 119.

    RevRick

    @narya: I first encountered Wittgenstein in a class on Church Dogmatics taught by George Lindbeck, who was a Lutheran observer at Vatican 2. He talked a lot about “language games” and their connection to the truth. “The dog barks”… and all that.
    Anyway, Lindbeck said that we kind of need to look at church dogma as analogous to grammar, and that its purpose was to protect the importance and integrity of the gospel message.

  121. 121.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, Moscow isn’t the only place attacked by ISIS-K recently. RFERL.org:

    The Key Issue

    A deadly suicide bombing struck Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar on March 21.

    The attack outside a bank killed at least 21 people and wounded around a dozen others, hospital sources in the city told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. Taliban officials put the death toll at three.

    The Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) extremist group, a rival of the Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack.

    Many of the victims appeared to be people queuing outside a branch of the New Kabul Bank in central Kandahar to collect their salaries.

    Why It’s Important: The high-profile attack undermined the Taliban’s claim that it has restored security in Afghanistan since seizing power in 2021.

    “Such acts also took place under the previous government and it was a disaster,” said Gul Ahmad, whose brother was killed in the attack, referring to the Western-backed Afghan government.

    “Now similar attacks happen, too. I request and I beg the current [Taliban] government to bring security to the country,” Ahmad told Radio Azadi.

    That IS-K managed to carry out a major assault in the heart of Kandahar, the de facto capital of the Taliban government, is also a blow. The Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, is based in the city.

    The suicide bombing has also highlighted the enduring threat posed by IS-K, which continues to carry out attacks against the Taliban and religious minorities.

    What’s Next: The Taliban is likely to continue to be the target of attacks by IS-K as well as several resistance groups that have waged a low-level insurgency against it.

    IS-K has been weakened by years of fighting with the Taliban, but it poses the biggest threat to its rival.

    Peace and comfort to the innocents.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  123. 123.

    wjca

    @RaflW: Politically, the GOP would be insane to threaten a shutdown close to the election. But then, that might be what they do, since they are clearly not led by normal, rational people.

    Except that TIFG might decide that his only chance at getting himself elected would be a government shutdown, which he could (try to) blame on Biden.** That it would get Republicans up and down the ballot voted out would, of course, mean less than nothing to him.

    ** Which probably wouldn’t work for him.  But by then he might well have no other, non-miracle, path.

  125. 125.

    Torrey

    @RevRick: ​
     
    Lindbeck said that the purpose of church dogma was to protect the integrity of the gospel message?

    Wondering if he meant “church dogma as it should be” (e.g., “politics,” as Aristotle understood it and as we have been discussing it) or “church dogma as it inevitably turns out to be IRL.”

  126. 126.

    cain

    @Melancholy Jaques:

    Maybe but we had a pandemic and they didn’t seem that engaged then either. You’d think something as life altering as having the country shut down would get them to focus on how the govt has been responding to it and getting things  back to normal.

    Trumps press briefings were always a disaster.

  130. 130.

    Citizen Alan

    @ColoradoGuy: Decades after leaving office, Newt Gingrich is still on my Champagne List. That’s my list of people whose deaths I will celebrate by drinking an entire bottle of champagne. I still have a bottle in my fridge right now from when Clarence Thomas teased us by going into the hospital for a week.

  131. 131.

    Citizen Alan

    @RevRick: In principle, I agree with you an Aristotle. In practice, “politics” as it is practiced in 21st Century America is now synonymous with “partisanship,” which is to say, “all that matters is that my party wins.”

  133. 133.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Philbert: No, I think Matt McIrvin was right at #117, it was “The Naked Sun”, which was one of the novels involving robot detective R. Daneel Olivaw. I’d forgotten that connection, thought I was remembering a short story.

  134. 134.

    wjca

    @Citizen Alan: In practice, “politics” as it is practiced in 21st Century America is now synonymous with “partisanship,” which is to say, “all that matters is that my party wins.”

    Which does suggest that “People before partisanship” might have been better phrasing.  In the hopes that “politics” might eventually be reclaimed.

  137. 137.

    Quadrillipede

    @Matt McIrvin: I think my favourite part of The Machine Stops is when the protagonist is finally persuaded to leave their room for a (highly unusual) face-to-face meeting, and makes their way to the nearly-abandoned and underutilized Airship depot… classic piece of retro-futurism.

  138. 138.

    Damned as Random

    @MomSense: My  stepdaughter is a Senior Petty Officer and goes nuts everytime they take it to the edge like this. They have to make contingency plans to cover for the civilians who will not be there. And with military moving in and out, every time there are new people to fit into the puzzle.

    The government functions in spite of the incompetents in Congress not doing their jobs, thanks to people like my kid who cover their sorry asses.

  139. 139.

    ColoradoGuy

    @Quadrillipede: I read The Machine Stops when I was in fifth grade. I still remember the horrifying scene when the Auto-Doc drops out of the ceiling, exposing all the gleaming razor-sharp surgical tools dangling from the still-twitching dying machine. And the last Airship flying over the Greek Islands, home of Western Civilization, and the protagonist turning away and closing the window blinds on it. And the dramatic final scene, as the auto-guidance for all of the airships fail at once, and they crash into the terminals, ripping open and exposing the beehive-like structure of the continent-spanning City.

    Still a very powerful book, and not dated at all.

  140. 140.

    Citizen Alan

    @cain:  Every time I hear about MBAs in action, I think of that Futurama episode where the Professor surgically altered a monkey so that it had an intelligence 5x that of a human and then sent it to college to get a physics degree. But it was so intelligent compared to the humans that it couldn’t make any friends. Then, some plot development caused the monkey’s intellect to be greatly reduced but made him more sociable and happier. The Professor sadly estimated that it’s intelligence was no greater than twice that of the average monkey.

    So it dropped out of the Physics program and went to Business School instead.

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